How to Make Overwatch-Style Art - 3D Environment Art Tips and Tricks

[@StylizedStation]

For ANYONE struggling with texturing in Substance Painter, I've got your back

[@HelderP1337]

Fantastic take Ryan! Congratulations. Here's some pointers off the top of my head, wrote this as I watched, hope it helps man. -you nailed the 3 big steps, all of that is really important! I'd add one: lighting, lighting, lighting! It's the single most important thing in this style. -Textures seem to have a bit too much AO/Cavity, this usually makes for a busy read. -It could be the PP, but textures also feel a little dark, did you do a pass on your mean? They usually need to be above 186. -The scale of your vines look a little large, try to remove diffuse information on them, just let them be a green color, and let the gradient of the lighting do the rest of the work, and also blur or vastly reduce the normal map on foliage, it helps. -vert blend of the grass on the ground looks really spotty, for our style, we usually try and "pool" / "focus" these kinds of blends into particular areas. Pool them into corners, or around props. These are usually great to lead the players eyes too. -cables on the ground are feeling a bit large. Enlarge props like this with caution, as they may throw the scale of your whole scene off. -your gate on the left is seems big, but feels small. Does that make sense? Adding some rivets, hinges and handles usually help. Try to think of scale as 3 tiers: "low, medium and big scale". This philology can be applied to whole env and individual props. -also don't be afraid to fully use PBR, let some metals go to metallic too, and use roughness to your advantage, usually putting some nice painterly detail on the roughness is all you need, it lets the reflections and lightign do the work. A lot of your metals are looking a bit dull. -you nailed the gradients on the food car's material! Gradients are key here, use them and abuse them. -i feel you didn't put enough focus on lighting, it's not bad on this scene at all, but the range of light/shade could be pushed a little more. -Make use of color bounce and color bleed with "paint with lights". If the light baker (lightmass in your example, right? increase diffuse boost) isn't doing enough color bounce, don't be afraid to place a few pointlights to exaggerate it. "Painting with lights" is one of the best tricks. -Also, for lighting, think of lighting for game envs as adding darkness, not the other way around. Hopefully that makes sense. -loved your "construction site" theme, theming is really important. -your set dressing also looks really nice, I like how you kept the ground nice and readable. we usually use the term "always be clumping", to remind us that props aren't meant to be scatered around evenly, but rather pool them in certain areas, and let other areas breathe. You nailed that. -didn't hear you talk about reflections. right after lighting, it's really important too. Specially if you have shaded areas in your map, reflections can make your materials pop. -When you're on the last stages, throw a PP volume there, and tweak it a little bit. You don't wanna go too crazy and use one of those exagerated LUT's. Just tweaking how dark shadows get, and maybe pump up the tone mapper, ssao, ssr, and tweak the saturation a little bit.

[@ryanpowell9133]

Helder! Oh wow, thank you SO MUCH! Honestly, this makes my day. I appreciate so much your taking the time to put this down for me and everyone else.

[@sunbalanced]

I was waiting for this,, would help me so much for my uni project this year! Always love the tutorials on this channel

[@plasticflower]

I'm so jealous you get to do stuff like this in your University...

[@sunbalanced]

@@plasticflower honestly you can learn everything you need here on youtube to create games and even make it your profession! Everything is changing so fast that universities and lecturers sometimes do not have the time to catch up and end up telling us to look stuff up on youtube, so it’s probably better to learn on your own if you have the discipline and motivation for it.

[@cantthinkofaname925]

Amazing stuff love the OW style! May i make a suggest, could you also break down Star wars clone wars art style (model + textures). Thanks!

[@Evergladez]

Thank you for this, I literally just got into assets/environments and this is the type of style I wanted to create.

[@pandashimi]

Nice tutorial, it’s a hard style to get right

[@WinterHorizon]

At 12:00 when you talk about perfermance with the 2 mats on 1 object that makes it have more draw calls. Would be 1 for mesh and 1 per Mat so a cube with 2 like this would be 3 instead of 2. Ok for large objects for really bad for small.

[@jixal]

In 3DS Max 2021 and onwards there's a modifier called face weighted normals that does the normal trick, no need for a script anymore.

[@CharlieZakiya]

Great! But did you draw a concept of this scene? Or you didn't use a concept? If you didn't, how can you do such great work without it?

[@ItaloCassini]

The "build a burger" sign remembers me of Borderlands.

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

Nice one as always my bro

[@GH-zv6br]

Feels like disney land with that intro music haha

[@3DRamenArt]

My concern with the modelling process is that i tend to overdo details everytime i try to make something simple i go about adding more details just to make the model functional in a sense. What details should i remove and focus on?

[@blenderzone5446]

Great game!

[@StylizedStation]

One of my favorites!

[@ryanpowell9133]

The BEST! :D

[@blenderzone5446]

Thanks buddy! i wish the same for you!

[@aaguilar_art5778]

K.I.S.S. is a method I can live by now, thank you!

[@ryanpowell9133]

It's for SURE easy to forget but can save you a lot of time!

[@plasticflower]

I was wondering about the texturing of the ground. There's a red brick texture that's covered by moss in some places. Since the bricks themselves are a repeating pattern, I'm assuming the moss is somehow overlayed on it in certain places. But how do you do that? I believe "decals" is something that might be used there, but I'm not sure how they work. Or is it just a quad with the moss texture floating here and there above the bricks?

[@ryanpowell9133]

It's vertex painting using a mask, it's a super fun way to break up repeating textures and create interesting intersection points!

[@Baxter244]

I have the same question. So, is this vertex painting done in UE? Is it painted with material or simple colors?

[@yankee1972]

finally

[@Gartist45]

Right so how would I achieve something like this in blender since thats the 3d model program I have?

[@ryanpowell9133]

There are so many great tutorials for Blender out there! Self-teaching is essential even in 4-year programs, and I know face-weighted normals can be done in Blender as well.

[@Gartist45]

@@ryanpowell9133 right so I do a lot of low poly stuff but for some reason stylized isnt easy for me.Thats what I want to learn is stylized art

[@plasticflower]

@@Gartist45 How would you differentiate between low-poly and stylized? I mean isn't low poly also stylized by necessity?

[@plasticflower]

@@OverbiteGames Why are you sorry? I mean if, as you say, a distortion from reality is "stylization", and low-poly models are necessarily a simplification and thus a distortion from reality, then low-poly is also stylized, don't you agree? So that's why I found it curious the other person said they did a lot of low-poly but had trouble with stylization. I'd thought the two go hand in hand. Well it doesn't look like they're going to answer so, who knows... :D

[@johninglis2622]

is he using photoshop when breaking down a scene when researching?

[@chlliza]

Удивительно

[@qnefe1977]

İts more like paladins

[@Alloniya]

You get the style, but colors in Overwatch more bright and saturated